Ethan Hunt and team continue their search for the terrifying AI known as the Entity — which has infiltrated intelligence networks all over the globe — with the world's governments and a mysteri...
Nearly thirty years ago, we saw the birth of an iconic franchise that has since defined itself with breath-taking real stunts, self-serious indulgences and innumerable latex-mask plot twists that build and indulge on both the best and worst aspects of the spy genre. From the Bruce Geller TV series from 1966 to the blood-bursting ranks of the Tom Cruise movies, the M:I series finally reaches its denouement (at least in the Tom Cruise era) with “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.”
It truly is a representation of the franchise at both its best and worst impulses, walking a fine line between engaging and exhausting while never quite finding the balance that made its predecessors so enjoyable.
Still every bit as clear-eyed and sufficient as his previous collaborations with Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie’s practicality as a director is evidence of his steady hand, showing a rare discipline that normally works under such a controlled approach. But his choices also allow perhaps too much space for this film's more indulgent amplifications to flourish unchecked; a stark contrast to Rogue Nation or Fallout.
Pomp, grandeur, and a touch of finality: indeed, valedictory is the name of the game when it comes to this film's presentation and the way it exploits every keen sense of nostalgia and sentimental closure, rendering every individual scene as a nod to its storied past, with each moment crafted to feel like a farewell note…to varying degrees of success. You could literally pick out any one separate moment from this production design and it’d look like a desktop wallpaper; Gary Freeman must have been haunted by the weight of crafting such visual triumphs because his production design strains with an almost perverse dedication to ensure every single location, every backdrop, every fleeting detail, no matter how repetitive or well-utilized bears an inescapable sense of closure and finality. Almost like it dares you to dismiss it as anything less than a work of art….but they didn’t have to flaunt it this much from its previous installments.
Fraser Taggart’s occasionally sturdy camerawork has a fleeting shot composition as far as symmetry is concerned, focusing on maintaining a chaotic yet controlled sense of urgency that perfectly encapsulates the film's manic energy. However, even his prowess behind the lens can't quite elevate some of the more mundane sequences that bridge the action from the table-setting and while the editing constructs that action well, it flounders in sustaining that momentum elsewhere, contributing to a faint sense of disorientation that detracts from the experience. Dense sound design carries over from the previous film, no huge dependency on CGI appears to be present (at least the more obvious cases), and even with Lorne Balfe’s absence felt, the music Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey compose isn’t persona non grata for this series; it imbues the proceedings with a swelling sense of import which is undercut only by its predictability.
Though some might point to its staggering duration as a sign of overindulgence, the pacing matches that of the iconic churning slow-burn to a fuse before exploding into flames, supercharging the most important fuses even with the derisively near 3hr runtime, and as for the tone, it’s what you’d expect from an M:I movie: delightfully absurd, knowingly preposterous, audaciously self-serious and reveling in indulgent slapdash. It ominously broods with a veritable wink of the eye while still maintaining a face both severely polished and completely straight face…..even if the face keeps dropping due to its determination to stay somber. And don’t pretend you didn’t see this coming: the action set-pieces are the type that escalate in both scope and unbelievability, but never do they cross the line into the realm of the cartoonish - well, almost. However, despite being the most exhilarating parts of the entire movie, they do lose points due to nearly single action sequence being regurgitated facsimiles of scenes we’ve seen in previous installments.
Nobody is on autopilot per se but the ensemble here at least knows what type of movie they’re in and they’re committed to the roles they’re given; doesn’t change how half the people here either barely have anything to do or are relegated to expository machines for the sake of obligatory use. Some of the dialogue slaps hard while the rest is pretty clunky and given that half of this movie is a deluge of exposition dumps, that isn’t the most encouraging of signs.
So this plot is the Two-parter for the marketed denouement regarding Ethan and the IMF’s battle against Gabriel, the Entity and possibly each other to decide what to even do with the fate of each other; by far, the most self-serious entry in the entire franchise to the most leaden-footed and loonily degree simultaneously. For a story so narratively simple yet relatively hollow, it’s one that feels somehow less confident in its aggressively self-serious ability to perform; something the previous Mission: Impossible film’s NEVER LACKED. The first half is more like the political thriller version of 12 Angry Men constantly spewing rhetoric on a real-world issue while the last half consists the typical fandango the franchise is known for, but with the mother of all awkwardly stiff postures as it swims for the end of the pool. It’s essentially a greatest hits compilation, extremely sober with its doses of melodrama and soap-opera levels of tension in a bulging film structure that’s somehow even more bloated than Dead Reckoning because of how much the script tells than shows.
Less is created through more, meaning most of the emotions here aren’t even that deeply sincere and you’d have to stretch the bowels of your imagination to no less than a pothole to make sense of the plot-holes.
Once more, it plays off the expected staple of themes regarding loyalty, trust, personal sacrifice and the necessary evil of dooming certain lives to save millions more but like Dead Reckoning, it focuses more bluntly on choices, destiny and consequences. Some bits are interesting as the Entity plays up the obvious misinformation metaphor to serve as an object of cult worship for certain people who crave their own destruction—the extreme version, I guess, of voting against one’s interests but what it also represents……does help put the film in an odd retrospective position regarding its incessant repetition's. Between the safe algorithmic retreading of the first hour and the classic M:I showmanship during the last while buckling up and down under its own weight, it’s a peculiar case of the movie deliberately becoming what it hates just to prove a point and then breaking away to salvage it. It’s also an expected celebration and victory lap not just for Tom Cruise’s contributions to the industry both as a stuntman and a vocal critic on A.I but also the humanists risking literal life and limb either for entertainment or the sake of others.
In that weird, bizarrely roundabout way, this movie is boldly daring to have its cake and eat it too even with the mutable stakes.
Look, part of this does feel pointless trying to criticize these dumb popcorn “Hero save world” adventures since the action is its main selling point and it still is one core plotline that never loses the initial gravitas of what makes a Mission: Impossible flick. The film maintains its identity even when indulging in its own largesse but it’s difficult to sweep all its flaws under the rug, especially considering the movies own refusal to expand on the technological, economic, geopolitical, and social ramifications of Ethan’s constant gambling of people’s lives and the internet going down among other things this franchise constantly spews.
So if you’re looking at this wondering if they filmed many of the scenes without a script or they pulled a M:I 2 and had the story be written AROUND the action, that’s because it probably was.
It is very difficult to argue both in favor of and against this movie’s Marvel-coded devotion to legacy and callbacks since this is meant to be a celebration of the past thirty years because unlike Dead Reckoning, this does feel like the movie is actively spinning its wheels for the sake of it even if it does deserve the victory lap. But like…..I dunno. For a conclusion that doesn’t feel like a conclusion, it veers from familiar, adrenaline-pumping action to drab interpretive self-reflection and back again like a yo-yo on steroids.
